Haitian American Leadership Organization

Haitian American Leadership Organization (HALO) offers 6 scholarships for post-secondary education

HALO is offering six scholarships of up to $1,000 to high school seniors of Haitian descent in good academic standing. Applications are now being accepted for the 2010 scholarships and the deadline is December 11, 2009.

The award recipients will be invited to attend HALO's annual gala and award ceremony that will be held on January 16, 2010 at the JW Marriott Hotel in Miami.

You may contact HALO with any questions at (888) 759-0085. You may also visit www.halohaiti.org.

Bright Futures Application

Seniors:
The Bright Futures application is now available online. You may apply at: http://www.floridastudentfinancialaid.org

FAFSA application will be available as of January 1st. You and your parents may now request a PIN, which will be needed in order to complete and process the FAFSA. The PIN may be requested at: http://www.pin.ed.gov

Thespian Troupe 6162

It is with great pride that that we announce that Felix Varela’s very own Thespian Troupe 6162 has been chosen two years in a row as a critique’s choice out of 27 High Schools that competed in Dade County for their originally written 1 Act The Memoirs of Romeo and Juliet.

Not only did the students attain an overall rating of Superior, but our Thespians also took home the coveted prizes of Best Technical Production as well as one of the highest honors in the district Best Actor through Zack Lopez’s performance as the Narrator.

To let you know the scope of these accomplishments, we have been chosen over such supposed “highly acclaimed schools” such as New World and have the honor of having on of our students be chosen as THE best actor in the district of Miami-Dade County which includes private schools.

Congratulations to all the thespians, to our theater arts teacher Mr. Quintana and Mr. Bode, our stagecraft teacher.


Click to watch openning

Vipers go to college !!

It’s the time of year when many of our student-athletes are deciding where to continue their education. This decision has already been made for one of our Vipers! Johnny Barbato will attend the University of Florida next year, signing a scholarship to play baseball for the Gators! This is a proud day for Johnny and his family whose father is our own baseball coach, John Barbato. Several other Viper Athletes are weighing college scholarship offers and will make their decisions in the coming months. We wish the best of luck to all our athletes as they continue their athletic careers.

Viper Cross Country Team

The Viper Cross Country teams qualified for the State Tournament in Dade City a few weeks ago. Representing the Girls squad was Stephanie Espinosa making her 2nd trip to State. The entire Boys team qualified including: Angelous Serna, Yazid Tejada, Mauricio Raules, Marc McIntyre, Marco Madriaga, Blair Bryce and Martin Tenorio. Congratulations to all of these athletes!

Proration of Student Allocation

The Florida Department of Education (FDOE) plans to prorate the Base Student Allocation for school districts. As a result of this proration, districts througout the state will be penalized. If you recall, our district has experienced a decrease in student enrollment and as such, our revenues have suffered due to lower FTE.

MDSCPS submitted an estimate of 341,627 for the 2009-2010 school year and the state did not accept this estimate. MDCPS had to lower the estimate by an additional 1,400 FTE'S to 340,227 even though there was no disagreement about the validity of the data. As it turned out, the actual FTE for the district will be 342,085. If the Legislature chooses to reduce the Base Student Allocation (BSA) for every student, the results for our district will further erode the budget thus negatively impacting all aspects of school operations including salaries.

I strongly urge you to contact your state legislators to urge them not to reduce the BSA. I have included a list of the Miami-Dade County Legislative Delegation including telephone numbers and email addresses so you can contact them and express your opposition and concern. You should also encourage your stakeholders to do the same.


 2009-2010 MIAMI-DADE COUNTY LEGISLATIVE DELEGATION

Felix Varela Senior:

State Senator: N. Rich
State Representative: M. Llorente

Viper Vibe Link

An issue of our newspaper is officially up online at ASNE’s website. Don’t forget to visit it. They award the schools with the highest hits every month. Encourage your everyone to give us a look. It is in full color. You can even download a pdf of the full paper.


Viper Vibe Link